The Hindu Business Line : Perils of summit diplomacy

Our relations with China have elements of co-operation and competition. It would be a serious mistake to underestimate the security and diplomatic challenges that Chinese policies of “containment” of India pose, says G. PARTHASARATHY.

Will the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh’s visit to China in mid-January pay off?

The Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, commences his diplomatic calendar for 2008 with a mid-January visit to China. The Chinese are perfect hosts. Meetings and banquets in the Great Hall of the People, sumptuous meals of Beijing duck and visits to the Great Wall and Forbidden City leave Indian leaders breathless, enthralled and prone to making tall claims of “breakthroughs” and “successes” they have achieved.

Our “leaders” should not forget that the Communist Mandarins who rule the Middle Kingdom today are a hard boiled lot, not given to sentimentalism, especially when dealing with neighbours whose rising international profile is not a welcome development. A review of past high level visits by Indian leaders to China is in order.

Disregarding professional advice that China was preparing to attack Vietnam, the then Foreign Minister, Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee, visited China in March 1979. China not only attacked Vietnam during his visit, but Supreme Leader Deng Xiao Ping rubbed salt on Mr Vajpayee’s wounds by asserting that China had only taught a “lesson” to Vietnam in 1979, as it had done to India in 1962.

The main “breakthrough” during the visit of Rajiv Gandhi to China in December 1988 was the establishment of a “Joint Working Group” on the border issue. But, within a year of this visit, China, which was already supplying nuclear weapons design and knowhow to Pakistan, upped the ante and commenced supply of nuclear capable M11 Missiles (now based in Sargodha) to Pakistan. Similarly, Narasimha Rao’s visit in September 1993 was followed almost immediately by Chinese supply of ring magnets for Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme and the nuclear capable DF 9 Missile, christened Shaheen 1 by the Pakistanis.

China repeated the “message” it gave to Mr Vajpayee in 1979, by testing a thermonuclear weapon when President Venkataraman paid a State visit in May 1992. Mr Vajpayee’ visit in 2003 has been followed by China providing Pakistan with Cruise missiles and plutonium facilities for a new generation of nuclear warheads and conventional weapons ranging from fighter aircraft to frigates.

Growing stridency

Visits of Chinese elders to the sub-continent have produced similar results. Following the visit of then Prime Minister Mr Zhu Rongji to India and Pakistan in 2002, China agreed to build the Gwadar Port in Baluchistan. One day after this visit, General Musharraf told a Pakistani journalist in the presence of his naval chief that he would not hesitate to provide base facilities to China’s navy at Gwadar in the event of tensions with India.

Much was made of the Wen Jiabao-Manmohan Singh Summit in New Delhi in 2005. The Agreement signed by the two Prime Ministers proclaimed: “In reaching a border settlement, the two sides shall safeguard populations in border areas”. The obvious reason for the provision was to clarify that the status of populated areas like Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh would remain unchanged. Repudiating the 2005 Agreement, China’s Foreign Minister now asserts: “The mere presence of populated areas (in Arunachal Pradesh) would not affect China’s claims on the border”. There has also been growing stridency in Chinese claims to the entire State of Arunachal Pradesh. China has not hesitated to provide Pakistan nuclear weapons capabilities. Moreover, between 1968 and 1992 it consistently denounced the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) as an instrument of hegemony. But Chinese hostility to India’s nuclear programme has been voiced repeatedly, while opposing the US proposals to end international nuclear sanctions against India.

This was reflected by China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman on March 2, 2006, just before the visit of President Bush to India. The spokesman said: “India should abandon nuclear weapons and strengthen atomic safeguards. India should sign the NPT and also dismantle its nuclear weapons… China hopes that concerned countries developing cooperation in peaceful nuclear uses will see that such cooperation should conform to the rules of international non-proliferation mechanisms.”

‘Look East policy’

China has approached several members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group to resist moves to end international nuclear sanctions against India. This hostility has been reinforced with Chinese opposition to India’s “Look East Policy” designed to expand cooperation with South East and East Asian countries.

A commentary in the August 2007 issue of the Renmin Ribao journal notes: “The US-India nuclear agreement has strong symbolic significance (for India) achieving its dream of a powerful nation…In recent years India introduced and implemented a “Look East” policy and joined most regional organisations in the East Asia Region.” The expansion of Indian influence in Asia and the Indian Ocean Region is not to China’s liking.

Chinese determination to undermine our ties with our eastern neighbours has been supplemented by a determined bid to undermine our ties with Nepal and Bhutan. At a time when the entire international community led by India was seeking to end King Gyanendra’s tyranny in Nepal, China joined Pakistan to provide weapons to the beleaguered Monarch, primarily to undermine Indian efforts for political reconciliation and peaceful transition to democratic rule.

China has since intruded into Dolam in Bhutan and destroyed Indian army posts in the Himalayan Kingdom, obviously aiming to destroy Indian credibility in the eyes of Bhutan’s leadership and people. Chinese forces have advanced southwards, bringing them closer to the strategic “Siliguri Corridor” the narrow strip in North Bengal connecting the northeast to the rest of India.

Article 2 of the India-Bhutan Treaty of 2007 states: “Neither Government shall allow the use of its territories for activities harmful to the national security interest of the other”. The Chinese intrusion in Bhutan has to be dealt within this treaty framework, if Indian credibility in Bhutan is to be sustained.

Does the Manmohan Singh Government have the same resolve in dealing with this issue as Rajiv Gandhi showed in dealing with the Chinese intrusion into Sumdorong Chu in 1987 and in countering China’s attempts to undermine India in Nepal between 1987 and 1989?

Our relations with China have elements of co-operation and competition. Apart from the potential to expand economic ties, China is an important international partner in dealing with issues such as climate change and global trade negotiations.

We should avoid the tendency of letting unwarranted security concerns upset proposals for joint collaboration with Chinese companies, or in according approval for Chinese airlines companies to fly to different destinations in India.

At the same time, there has to be a realistic understanding that the present pattern of trade, which is colonial, wherein India primarily supplies raw material to China, has to undergo a structural change, to be sustainable and mutually beneficial. It would also be a serious mistake to underestimate the security and diplomatic challenges that Chinese policies of “containment” of India pose.

A more proactive policy in the Asia-Pacific, involving missile transfers and expanded maritime and military co-operation with Vietnam, raising the level of economic contacts with Taiwan to that practiced by Asean partners like Singapore and Thailand and a more purposeful approach to co-operation with Japan are needed, apart from activating the existing framework of expanding ties with democracies in the Asia-Pacific region, if India is to effectively respond to the strategic challenges China poses.

(The author is former High Commissioner to Pakistan.)

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